WebPage Accessibility Tips

Accessibility on the Internet is a growing art form. This website is designed to be aesthetically pleasing, useful, and as accessible as possible. We will continue to make every effort to comply with the WCAG & Section 508 guidelines.

Webpage accessibility is a two-way responsibility. The user must learn their software and settings to best access the internet for their needs, and the webmaster should make every effort to be aware of possible barriers and design around them.

Contrast - Text / Background

Below are guidelines to customize your web browser to better view all web pages.

Internet Explorer

Click on the "Tools" menu.
Select "Internet Options."
Under the "General" tab, select "Accessibility."
Place a check mark in the box to "Ignore colors specified on web pages" and select the "OK" box. This will return you to the "General" tab.
Select the "Colors" box and un-check the "use Windows colors" box. Use the "Text" and "Background" boxes to select the colors desired (i.e. white text and black background).
Select the "OK" box and then the "OK" box on the "General" tab and the colors should change on the browser.

Netscape 6.0

Click on the "Edit" menu.
Select "Preferences."
Double click on "Appearance" to expand the menu.
Click on "Colors". In the field "When a web page provides its own color and background" select "Use my own chosen colors, ignoring the colors specified."
Use the "Text" and "Background" boxes to select the colors desired (i.e. white text and black background).
Select the "OK" box.

Fonts

The following is the easiest way to change the font size for the most common web browsers.

Internet Explorer

Click on the "View" menu.
Highlight "Text Size".
Default setting will be medium. By changing the settings between largest and smallest; the text displayed on the page will be modified.

Netscape 6.0

Click on the "View" menu.
Highlight "Text Size".
Default setting will be 100%. Selecting one of the percentage sizes will change the size of the displayed text.

Free Text To Speech Programs

The programs on this page are available via the internet, without charge for the initial download. BVIM has not tested most of these programs, and cannot provide technical support or promise that these programs will work for you. We would appreciate your comments on these programs. If you have problems with any of this software, please contact the makers of the software for assistance. If you know of other FREE software or Shareware, or have feedback on the programs listed below, please email the information to BVIM.

Help Read: Free Screen Reader for Windows 3.1+; 1.3 meg. download.
ReadPlease: Free Text-to-Speech Reader, for Windows 95+; 9.1 meg download.
WeMedia: Free Talking Browser, for Windows 95+; 8 meg download; requires MSIE4 or higher.
Read-E: Free one-year license. Text-to-Speech Reader, for Windows 98+; 4 meg download; requires MSIE 6.0.

HELP Readª freeware
is a program developed by the Hawaii Education Literacy Project (HELP) and distributed freely over the internet.

This program uses a text-to-speech synthesizer and can read text files, web pages, e-books, and text in the windows clipboard.

System Requirements:

PC computer with Windows 3.1 or later, at least 4MB RAM, at least 2 MB hard disk space, and a sound card and speakers.

Use these links for more information:

ReadPlease 2003 Text-to-Speech Program

ReadPlease is free software for Windows that can read text copied from text in any window. The ReadPlease display allows customization of background color, font style and color, and a slider bar to control text size.

System Requirements:

PC computer with Windows 95 or later, a sound card and speakers.

Use these links for more information:

Information about ReadPlease.
Download ReadPlease 2003 (Free Version)
Free MP3 Sound Recorder.Record and save speech from ReadPlease to MP3 files playable on anycomputer.
Free MP3 Sound Recorder.Record and save speech from ReadPlease to MP3 files playable on any computer.
Download Extra Languages.Available languages include French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, and Portuguese, as well as British-pronunciation English.

WeMedia Talking Browser

WeMedia's Talking Browser, Version 1 is a talking browser that you can use to navigate through the internet. Its installed speech engine will read you the page title, the whole page, or sections of the page that you select. It also has a "link map" that allows you to quickly scroll through the links on the page as they are read to you, and a built in search engine which connects automatically to Google.com.

System Requirements:

PC computer with Windows 95 or later, a sound card and speakers, Microsoft Windows Explorer 4 or above must be installed on your machine.

Use these links for more information:

Read-e Text-to-Speech Browser

Free download in exchange for feedback from users.

Converts MSIE 6.0 to a read-aloud browser. Special features include: reads text on mouseover, reads browser controls and list of favorites, dictionary function finds synonyms and definitions of highlighted words, pop-up suppressor eliminates distracting advertising windows.

System Requirements:

PC computer with Windows 98, ME, NT (with SP6), 2000, or XP, Internet Explorer 6 (downloaded if required), TTS voice (downloaded and installed if required); a sound card and speakers.

Use this link for more information:

Available from www.Artificial-Relevance.com.